Bookmakers: Money Laundering

(asked on 26th March 2018) - View Source

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he has made a recent (a) assessment of the level of risk of money laundering in the bookmakers sector and (b) estimate of the loss to the public purse through such money laundering by means of fixed odds betting terminals; and if he will make a statement.


Answered by
John Glen Portrait
John Glen
Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
This question was answered on 29th March 2018

The UK’s second National Risk Assessment of money laundering and terrorist financing was published in October 2017, following the first National Risk Assessment in 2015. These publications provided comprehensive assessments of the money laundering and terrorist financing risks that the UK faces, across all regulated and various unregulated sectors.

The 2017 NRA continued to assess the retail betting sector, including bookmakers, as low risk for both money laundering and terrorist financing.

There is no available estimate of the loss to the public purse through money laundering by means of fixed odds betting terminals. The Government acknowledges that there are significant costs associated with economic crime and money laundering in general, and is committed to making the UK economy a hostile environment for illicit finance. However, as stated above, the 2017 National Risk Assessment assessed the risk of money laundering through the retail betting sector as low.

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